


In Love and War

by distantattraction



Category: L.A. Noire
Genre: M/M, Post-Game, gay detectives, this relationship is a fight and will never be anything more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distantattraction/pseuds/distantattraction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events in the LA river tunnels, Roy and Jack find themselves falling into some sort of relationship--the kind that's all fight and no romance, for all that they may touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Love and War

**Author's Note:**

> also available on tumblr at http://lanoireangstcorner.tumblr.com

There was anger in everything they did the first time: Vicious energy in the way they pried the other's lips apart with their tongues, resentment in their fingers as their hands moved over each other's bare chests, outright aggression in the way they vied for control. The words of their argument still rang through their minds as they tore their clothes off, not wanting to waste any more time with thinking.

 

Roy didn't know how Jack had gotten his address, but Kelso was a resourceful fellow. Maybe he'd called up R&I with that fancy new badge of his. Maybe he'd just dug it out of the LAPD files. Hell, Biggs probably would have found it for him. He'd certainly gained the department's respect for playing a part in the dismantling of the Suburban Redevelopment Fund.

It didn't matter how he'd found the place. All that mattered was that Roy had opened the door and Jack had walked in. Roy offered him a seat with mock casualty in his voice, but Jack wasn't in the mood for games.

"It was you, wasn't it. The one who told the papers about Cole and Elsa."

It wasn't a question. There was no uncertainty in Jack's voice, and Roy didn't pretend to hear any. He just smiled and said, "Now, what makes you think I'd want to take the fall for a thing like that?"

Jack shrugged. "Nothing. There isn't any profit in admitting what you did, so I don't suppose you'll ever have a reason to do it. I just wanted to make sure I had things straight."

Roy just smiled that infuriating smile of his.

 

There was no romance in it, only more bitterness. They were both furious about how much the other had meant to Cole, furious that that was all they really had in common. It was a competition to see who would be able to hold himself back longer, to see who would be able to push the other over the edge, to see who would break first. It was a competition neither man could win because they were both broken already.

 

"Look, Kelso, if it had been up to me, Cole wouldn't have been in those tunnels at all that night. But I can't change the past, and I can't change the fact that he's gone. What's done is done."

"If it had been up to you? You had the option of not selling him out to the papers. You made that choice, no one else."

Roy scoffed. "I'm not going to stand here trying to convince you that I never intended things to go that far. If you know Cole as well as I do--as well as I did--you should know that it was his own determination that put him in danger."

"This is your idea of remorse?"

He spread his arms in a gesture that was half offering, half shrug. "Take it or leave it, Jack."

"And I'm supposed to believe that you cared about him?"

"More than you'll ever know," Roy said. They could almost taste the bitterness in his voice.

 

It had simply been a pause in the argument, a chance for them to catch their breath. But Jack watched as Roy's eyes glanced down at his lips before meeting his gaze again.

They moved toward each other in a rush, Jack grabbing Roy by the waist and Roy putting a hand on the back of Jack's head, keeping their faces pressed together. Jack used his weight to force Roy to the floor, but the detective turned them around, pushing Jack onto his back. Roy's hands moved first to Jack's shoulders, keeping them pinned as he kissed him; then down his chest, taking his time as he felt the muscle beneath Jack's shirt; then down to the belt he unbuckled with deft hands.

Jack moved quickly along the front of Roy's shirt, undoing the buttons and pushing it off along with his jacket. Roy tugged Jack's pants down to his knees before slipping a finger between his legs, inside him. Jack sucked in a hard breath, but he didn't fight him off. Instead, he put a hand on each side of Roy's head, dragging him in for another kiss.

It wasn't painless when Roy entered him, but he let it happen, and then he pushed for more. Roy gave it to him gladly, hands gripping Jack's hips to lift his ass off the floor, allowing him to press more deeply into him.

Their argument wasn't over. A hard bite to Roy's lower lip drew a grunt of pain from the detective. A smirk played around Jack's lips until Roy responded with a particularly forceful thrust. Jack's hands clenched tightly into fists once before opening again, fingertips and palms pressed hard into the carpet to brace himself. Roy pushed him in every way he knew how, moving into him hard and then slowing down until Jack put up a fight, both of them throwing insults at each other all the while. Their taunts mixed with the obscenities they shouted whenever the sensation of their bodies against each other was too much to ignore.

 

The second time, Roy came to Jack's office. They closed the blinds and kept their voices low but heated as they continued their argument, Jack remembering that the last time someone he knew had come to see him at work, it had been Cole.

The transition to sex came more smoothly than either of them anticipated because they didn't stop arguing, even as Jack unzipped Roy's pants and Roy slipped Jack's suspenders off his shoulders. Their pleasure--and there was definitely pleasure--wasn't as important to them as it was that their cutting remarks continued past their moans.

Jack had kissed him in the middle of a sentence, stopping his words by putting his mouth to other uses. Roy had his hand down past the waistband of Jack's pants without even stopping to think. Jack moved into the contact and felt the corners of Roy's lips turn up.

He wasn't exactly sure how Roy had him turned around and bent over his own desk, but the fingers gripping the hard edge of the wood were the only thing keeping Jack from being pushed face-first into his paperwork. Roy made some comment about how you wouldn't expect such a strong military man to make a habit out of taking it from behind, but that it was a good look on him anyway. Jack scowled and told him to shut the fuck up. When Roy didn't comply, Jack stomped hard on his foot.

Roy let out a low cry of pain--that had _hurt_ \--but he knew how to make people regret not doing what he wanted. He put an arm across the back of Jack's shoulders and pushed down hard so his elbows bent. Jack's head crashed onto the surface of the desk, which shook under the force of Roy's suddenly fervent thrusts. "You, my dear, need to learn how to play _nice_ ," he hissed. Jack didn't say anything, but he tried to lift his weight back up onto his forearms. Roy pushed down hard on the back of his head and even harder into him, forcing the air out of his lungs and leaving Jack gasping for breath.

 

The third time, they met up at a bar and drank more than they should have, stopping only when Roy knew one more might leave him completely unable to drive. He drove Jack back to his apartment and followed him out of the car. Jack didn't ask how Roy knew his address; he remembered that Roy had been there when Cole picked him up for that mess of an interrogation. Roy accepted the invitation to come inside that Cole had rejected all those weeks ago.

They might not have even made it into the apartment if Roy had had his way. He pushed Jack up against the wall of the dimly lit stairwell. Jack bit down a moan as Roy stroked him through his pants and shoved his tongue between Jack's lips. He chuckled when Jack pushed him away and grabbed his wrist,  all but dragging him up the rest of the stairs and through his door.

They didn't make it out of the entryway. As soon as Jack had closed the door, Roy backed him up against it, kissing him hard as his hands moved to their zippers. He was getting altogether too smug about their situation, and Jack wasn't having that. Not from this man who had done terrible things to good people without feeling the consequences.

It wasn't hard to get Jack's pants down around his ankles, but one of Roy's eyebrows lifted when he felt hands on his shoulders, forcing him down. He frowned as his attempts to stay standing were met by an increase in pressure. He met Jack's gaze as he sank reluctantly to his knees. There was a fierce look in Jack's eyes that Roy hadn't been expecting to find there.

He remembered Cole telling him that he didn't know how to handle Kelso. Cole had been right about a lot of things; Roy supposed he'd been right about that as well.

Neither of them cared that anyone who was passing through the hallway would be able to hear Jack's moans through the thin barrier of the door. Roy didn't even care that it went against all of his instincts to be taking Jack's cock between his lips. All that mattered was the heat of Roy's mouth as it closed around him, the groans he couldn't stop leaving his throat, and the fact that for now, for this one night, Jack could convince himself that he was winning. His fingers gripped Roy's hair tightly as he came, more tightly than was really necessary, but he didn't care. He didn't even know if it was still deliberate, if he still wanted to cause Roy pain. The detective would probably take it out on him later if he'd noticed, anyway.

 

Eventually, they stopped needing the catalyst of a fight to get them going. They found that Jack could be sweet and that Roy had his own ways of being kind, most of which manifested themselves in a reduction of his usual antagonism. They even had conversations that weren't about Cole, but they could always feel the weight of his presence on their minds.

The first time Cole's name slipped out from between Roy's lips as he moved his hips into Jack's, Roy had immediately felt guilty. They were supposed to be past that, although they both suspected they would never really stop thinking about the man who had brought them together. He'd thought Jack would want to talk about it, and he spent days dreading a conversation that never came.

Jack could see the guilt on his face when they'd finished and he could look Roy in the eye again. Maybe he should have used the incident as leverage, to wipe that mocking smile off Roy's face for once, but he didn't have it in him. The truth was, that night was just the first time he had been sure that Roy didn't realize that there were times when Cole's name would push itself out of Jack's mouth in a breathless gasp. The mistakes were quiet enough that a distracted ear could miss them. He supposed he was lucky that his slip-ups could go unnoticed, but he didn't feel  lucky. He felt dirty. He felt sick.

 

The transition from enemies to whatever it was they had become wasn't difficult, but it was uncomfortable. Jack had no idea what to call their relationship now. It went deeper than casual fucking, but they certainly couldn't call it a romance. They were more than friends--but were they even friends at all? He still didn't know. At some point, he stopped trying to figure it out and just let it be.

 

On the anniversary of the battle at Sugar Loaf, Jack called Roy over. He didn't say a word when he opened the door, just stripped them both down with a meticulousness that reminded Roy of Cole. Roy didn't know everything about Jack, didn't know anything about Okinawa, but he knew enough to figure that if Jack was acting strange, there was a reason for it. So when Jack forced him to his knees and pressed his face into the carpet, he let him do it. When Jack fucked him, he let him do that too. All's fair in love and war, as they say, and this was both. It had always been both.

When they were done, Jack released his grip on the back of Roy's neck and stood up, reaching for the clothes he'd tossed onto the floor when Roy walked in. Roy got to his feet as well, catching the boxers Jack tossed his way and putting them back on.

"Feeling better?" he asked as he sat on an arm of the couch and lit a cigarette.

"A bit."

"Going to tell me what that was about?"

Jack took his time before answering. For a few moments, the only sounds in the room were the rustle of Jack's clothes as he dressed himself and the long exhales of Roy's breath as he smoked. Finally, "Maybe one day." His voice was quiet despite its intensity, as it so often was when he was serious.

Roy shrugged. "Fair enough."

 

As time passed, they stopped arguing about every little thing and settled into some sort of routine. They spent their time before and after work with each other, often not talking, just feeling the other's presence. They tried not to talk about Cole, tried not to think about him, but he would come up in conversation. It was occasional, but inevitable. And then they would fall back into the old patterns, shouting themselves hoarse before taking their fight into the bedroom.

They had a feeling that it wasn't as fair as they pretended it was to be using each other like this, but it didn't stop them. There were a lot of things that weren't fair.


End file.
